عربي/Ελληνικά

The title “the first halal* restaurant in Athens” may seem something ordinary for the residents of the large cities of the world. But for us it is something to be proud of.

The first halal restaurant is now open in Halandri. The name is Anahita and has Persian cuisine, which is so delicious and compatible with the local tastes.

The environment is very refreshing, has open roof for the summer nights, running water and the decoration is inspired of the Persian art and tradition, old and contemporary.

In the lobby of the restaurant you can see fine art pieces from pottery, paintings, drawing in leather, calligraphy

There is a huge variety of dishes, all meat that contained is halal and you can taste a collection of non-alcoholic beers with several fruit tastes beside the ordinary beverages.

The environment really attracts anyone who wants to taste traditional dishes from Iran and taste the fresh Iranian bread that is made in a traditional oven in front of your eyes.

Beyond that, the fact that people that eat halal are able to go and dine in Athens without any concern is a relieving fact. Many people avoid to eat meat out of their house, and many have been tricked by restaurant owners that add pork ingredients in the beef because it is cheaper, advertising the opposite. So the first halal restaurant in Athens is something you should definitely try.

Anahita Restaurant, 15 Paleologou str. Halandri, tel. +30 210 6817277

*Halal means permissible and  in this case refers to the meat that is slaughtered in the permissible way, draining all blood well, and also refers to the drinks that do not contain alcohol.

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Source: Al Jazeera

by Soumaya Ghannoushi*

It is hard to imagine amidst the omnipresence of discourse currently on Islam that a mere three decades ago, Islam had been a marginal concern situated on the periphery of western consciousness.

If ever encountered in press reports during the cold war, it would most likely have been in the figure of the “mujahideen” confronting the Empire of Evil in Afghanistan. Islam appeared as a benign ally of the forces of freedom camped in New York and London.

What finally brought it to the heart of Euro-American preoccupations were the events that occured on 9/11.

Islam became a local and globalised issue at once, transmitted in countless daily images across the globe.

Since then, rarely does a day go by without hearing, reading, or watching reports of a terrifying Muslim-related event. The presence of Muslim minorities within western capitals has further complicated things, aggravating the intricate interplay of the local and the global.

Fears of a perpetual Muslim danger overlapped with deep-seated fears of immigrants, aliens, and strangers.

Explicating the truth

Coverage of Islam has turned into an industry specialising in the engineering of images, scenes, and messages.

In a globalised world governed by the power of the image, the question is no longer what has sparked this event or that incident and how it has unfolded on the ground, but how it gets captured by the camera and reported to viewers, listeners, and readers at home.

Some might argue,  that the media merely reports what is already in existence. However things are not so straightforward in the real world. For the lens is neither neutral nor objective.

It is subject to a set of pre-defined choices and calculations that decide what we see and do not see, know and do not know.

The media is not a mirror reflecting what is out there. Its role is not simple, passive transmission, but active creation, shaping, and manufacturing, through a lengthy process of selection, filtering, interpretation, and editing.

The hidden arms that hold the reins of our media – the giant news corporations and their masters – are not benign charities driven by the love of humanity.

Paradigms of dissemination

Of the 57 countries in the vast geographic and cultural expanse known as the Muslim world, some are rich, others poor; some royal, others republican; some conservative, others liberal; some stable, others less so; some where women preside over the state, others that deny them the right to vote; some that oppress in the name of religion, others that do so in the name of secularism…etc

But this strikingly varied mosaic is absent from mainstream coverage of the subject. What is compound, complex, diverse, and multi-faceted turns into a plain surface without depth, reduced to a narrow set of narratives about blood-thirsty terrorists, shouting mobs, black turbans, battered wives, and caged daughters.

The Muslim world becomes a silent object that does not speak, but is spoken for, an anonymous background against which stands the reporter dispatched from the metropolis.

S/he is the agent of understanding, the one who deciphers this strange entity’s mysterious codes and uncovers its secrets for us; the one who gives it meaning, truth and order.

Nowhere is this will to superficiality and reductionism more evident than in reports of conflicts in the Middle East.

Viewers are given a few minutes during which they watch and hear descriptions of wreckage, smoke, burnt cars, scorched bodies, severed limbs, blood, and wailing widows.

With no attempt to explain the underlying causes and histories of the crises in question, the reports merely compound existing misunderstanding.

The confusion is such that roles are often reversed, with the victim mistaken for the oppressor.

Prisms of perception

This is confirmed by a number of studies, such as the one conducted following the Palestinian Intifada by Greg Philo and Mike Berry of the Glasgow University Group.

The researchers monitored hours of BBC and ITV coverage of the 2002 Intifada, examined 200 news programmes, and interviewed over 800 people about their perceptions of the conflict .

The researchers encountered an alarming level of ignorance and confusion among the viewers, of whom only 9 per cent knew that the “occupied territories” were occupied by Israel, with the majority believing that the Palestinians were the occupiers.

This is hardly surprising given the unbalanced coverage and its tendency to obscure the central truths in the conflict: It does not tell us that over 418 Palestinian villages were destroyed in 1948, that their inhabitants were expelled in their hundreds of thousands, that Israel was largely established by force on 78 per cent of historic Palestine, that since 1967 it has illegally occupied and imposed various forms of military rule on the remaining 22 per cent, or that the majority of Palestinians – over 8 million – live as refugees today.

Reports of the Iraq war do not fare better. The viewer is given the impression that the country’s ills are rooted in its people’s bloodthirstiness and love of self-mutilation, with one sect and ethnicity vying for the other’s destruction.

The Americans emerge as benign mediators whose role consists in imposing order and preventing the different groups from exterminating each other.

The causes of the ongoing state of chaos are increasingly being brushed under the carpet, viz the 150,000 strong army deployed to invade a country hundreds of miles away, the destruction of its infrastructure, systematic demolition of its national collective memory, desecration of its cultural heritage, erection of an ethnic and sectarian based political system, dissolution of its army in the name of “de-baathisation”, and arming of one faction against the other - first the Kurdish Peshmarga, then the Shia militias in the name of “confronting the Sunni triangle”, and finally al-Anbar’s Sunni tribes under the pretext of combating Al Qaeda.

What the media reports do not tell us is that Iraqis continue to suffer not because they are Arabs, Muslims, brown-skinned, or followers of an “inherently violent” religious culture, but because they are the victims of a heartless power game that saw them as little more than insects, worthless creatures to trample on without bothering to count the dead.

The west seems to have created its own “machinery of truth” about Islam, Muslims, Arabs, and the Middle East.

Through it the lens is directed and small narratives are produced and reproduced ad infinitum.

The titles and headlines may vary, but they lead back to a narrow ring of notions that define Muslim society in the eyes of manufacturer and domesticated consumer alike.

These boil down to violence, fanaticism, irrationality, emotiveness, stagnation, subordination, and despotism. They are the pillars of an orthodoxy, which is popularised by the media and bolstered by a complex network of power centres and institutions.

To defy it is to place oneself outside the mainstream and within the margins, alongside outsiders, heretics, and truth monsters.

*Soumaya Ghannoushi is a freelance writer specialising in the history of European Perceptions of Islam. Her work has appeared in a number of leading British papers including the Guardian and the Independent.

By Andreas Papageorgopoulos

http:// ellinas-xoris-ellada.blogspot.com

Διαβάστε στα Ελληνικά

Completely different to the belief, the one we are losing day by day or with the one that is going to almost change by the government’s strict financial policy ( regardless those that are going to follow!). This is the religious belief of Muslims, which seems to gain more and more believers among the Greek Orthodox Christians that is us. Few years ago, we could not even think about it, but modern reality is completely different. We are talking about thousands of our fellow countrymen who have as adults convert with a full consciousness in Islam.

As for how many thousands are exactly, the numbers are vague as the vast majority of the converted Greeks prefer to keep hidden their conversion and their preference to Allah. Though it is certain, that most of the former Christian Orthodox Greeks lives beyond our country’s national borders, in America, in Europe, in Africa up to the land of Far East. But not to confuse ourselves, the Muslim legal or illegal immigrants who live in Greece temporarily or permanently, as well as the Muslim minority, who live close to our Northern borders, is a whole different story.

The very first demographic “disclosures” about the Greek believers of Allah happened approximately two years ago. May I remind you an excellent research article by Stella Kasdagli at “Pontiki” (4.12.2008) with plenty of informative material of the Internet (www.greeksrethink.com, www.greekmuslim.wordpress.com), interviews both named and unnamed about the suspicion, the fears of the Greek society, up to the hiding from their families. For example, Iman Sotiria Kouvalis, Muslim since 2000 and founder of the previously referred blog, refers an example of a parent’s reaction: “Oh my God!!  You became a Turk! It would be better if you were telling me that you are pregnant or a drug addict”.

So to conclude: “Jamilah Kolocotronis, author and lecturer in Islamic schools, originates (as she states in her curriculum vitae) from the family of Theodoros Kolocotronis, grew up at the United Sates of America with the stories of her grandfather about the Greek revoluti0on of 1821 against the Turks. “ When I went to college, I started learning about Islam. I was though, still carrying inside me the suspicion against the Muslim Turks, the people that my ancestor fought for the Greek Independence. It took me four years to convert to Islam. One of the reasons, I think, is that I could not take this decision and talk to my grandfather about it. He died in 1979, and I became a Muslim in 1980.”

By Gerasimos Loukatos

It was the first time  I heard the adhan (call to prayer) from my room’s half-open window. No compass needed since the arrow on the ceiling is already pointing the direction to Mecca. The small colorful carpet for the guests and access to water was everything I needed to perform my five daily prayers..

The second Kuwaiti European Convention was held at The Regency Hotel and hosted by the Islamic Presentation Committee (IPC). The aim of the convention was to provide European Islamic organizations with top-level knowledge in leadership and communication.

Lectures were delivered from scholars and practitioners, famous in the Muslim world such as Dr. Tareq Al Suwaidan, public speaker, author and expert in management and Dr. Moosa Al-Jowaiser, consultant and expert in psychology and personality types. Mahmoud  Al Saify Phd researcher in Islamology, Dr. Abdullah Hakim Quick historian and ShaikhMuhammad Alshareef founder and president of Al Maghrib Institute almost completed the 2-week program of the convention.

Among the lecturers was Iman Sotiria Kouvalis, founder of Greeksrethink, expert in Strategic and Operational planning and author of the groundbreaking program “10 steps forward” and how to build an Olympic-level organization.

Muslim Association of Greece’s delegation was able to meet with participants from other organizations from Holland, Sweden and Norway and exchanged ideas and valuable information.

Side activities included visiting a dessert farm, the Cultural center, the Grand Mosque and several excursions to the streets of Kuwait city. It should be noted that Kuwait is example of a country where East meets the West, where the Imam’s call to prayer is heard in view of a decorated Christmas tree and people of different cultural and religious background live together in harmony.

Finally, in a well-meant competition the Greek team won the prize for an outstanding overall performance during the convention and for the best presentation of project as per following link:

Euphoria Video

Enjoy the Photo Gallery

Breathtaking Video! Piracy on Free Mediterranean Cargo Ship of Freedom Flotilla! World’s first broadcast.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Διαβάστε στα Ελληνικά / عربي

Last Thursday September 2, the formal Iftar dinner of MAG took place at Ledra Marriott hotel. Over a hundred guests participated at an Iftar of the Muslims of Athens.

The evening begun with the break of the fast, and the Maghreb (evening) prayer. After that, salutations came from the chairman Naim Elghandour, the rep of the Hellenic Church father Stefanos Alexopoulos and professor Vangelis Pissias.

At the Iftar were participating from the Ministry of Education the deputy minister Mr. Panaretos, Mrs. Dragona, Mr. Marioras, Mrs. Faragoulitaki. From the ministry of Protection of the Citizen were the deputy Chief of Pollice mr. Rahovitsas, Head of State Security Mr Dikopoulos, Attica Chief Mr Balakos, and other important people from the ministry. From the ministry of foreign affairs was Mr. Takis, from the City of Athens was the deputy mayor Mr. Papadakis and councellor Ms Jarvis. New Democracy party was represented by Ms Elsa Papadimitriou, Syriza party by Mr Dritsas and Ecologists by Ms Kontouli. Many diplomats as the ambassador of France, ambassador of Indonesia, ambassador of Syria, deputy ambassadors of UK, Egypt and other officials from all Muslim embassies. Significant businessmen, academics, journalists, people of arts, friends, imams special guests from Egypt, and reps from the initiative “ship to Gaza” were all there at this glowing evening.

Sponsors of the event were the companies Visiotec & Loukisas Cladding, of Mr’s Dalamangos. Hytiris and Loukisas that are specialized at the security doors of the banks

The atmosphere was warm and friendly and tasting the fine food, soon there were several tables with different discussion topics. The sense of the harmonious coexistence and mutual respect was the big message of the event and all together proved it beyond any doubt, renewing the appointment for the next year’s Iftar, having the best impressions.

See Photo Gallery here

Source: Protagon

By Naim Elghandour

Διαβάστε στα Ελληνικά

Ramadan in Athens for the 37^th time. It started on August 11 with the sweltering heat and will end on September 10^th. The first days of adjustment are always harder as the rhythms of life do not change despite the fasting from sunrise to sunset.

Late evening before August 15^th, after having iftar at home, which is the dinner that breaks the fast, I took Sheikh Mohammed, a respectful imam from Al Azhar university to go and pray at Piraeus. Al Andalus is the name of the praying place but it does not remind me anything of the glory of Andalusia as it is an underground warehouse on Filonos street in the heart Trouba where we pray for the last 17 years.

As we go down and go inside, in the first five minutes the sweat is running like a river. My breath stopped and the 60 year old imam who came from upper Egypt who can [usually[ bear the heat was ready to collapse. He told me that his sweat was dripping under his face all the way down to his socks. Why???

I was in despair because I am responsible for all these people who come to pray. I prayed that the temperature falls a bit to avoid the ambulances. You cannot put ventilation in this place nor air condition because it has no window. It is a hole under the ground.

We finished our prayer as [best] we could and when we went up to the surface I realized that this cannot happen again. The temperature at 11pm was 37°C and who knows about the humidity, it was suffocating even in open air.

The day after, I informed the state security that we were going to pray on the sidewalk outside of the “mosque” and that it is better to bring us a police car than to be taken by ambulances.

Sunday at 10 in the night all prayer mats were laid down on the sidewalk of Filonos street and the few people that walked by were surprised. Of course we did not bother anyone, all stores were closed. But we were alert, you never know what could happen, but the prayer was more humane in those hot days.

And I am thinking: What does a man have to go through to praise God as He deserves? My little kids were crying to take them with me earlier, but where can I take them?

Sometimes I take them to the Neos Kosmos garage that has better ventilation and they play with the other kids. There, the older kids are learning how to pray and the little ones imitate the grownups and then they start chasing each other and laugh, but we are always underground. When we finish, I buy them ice cream.

This is how Ramadan is in our great city.

———

Translated by: Anna Stamou

Source: Vima Newspaper

By Mariniki Alevizopoulou

Διαβάστε στα Ελληνικά

“If today we are able to ask the Greek prime minister ‘when we will open the Athens mosque?’ that happens thanks to the steps we made,” stated the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan allying the nationalistic groups in his country.

At the same time the Christian pilgrims were attending the historical service at the remains of Holy Mary Soumela of Pontus, for the first time after 88 years. A few days before some other nationalistic groups had desecrated the graves of a Muslim cemetery in Komotini. Those two facts made the Turkish prime minister feel ‘one step in front of the Greeks’ causing discomfort (and) of the Muslims that live in Greece.

“If the government looked this matter of the mosque with greater seriousness, they wouldn’t have pressure via statements from abroad,” responds the almost disappointed  president of the Muslim Association of Greece Mr. Naim Elghandour and continues, “Everything was ready since 2006. Even the funds were there; 15 million euro are in the treasury of the Ministry of Education since that time. This is important to emphasize that in a so crucial financial period for Greece. Maybe part of this money comes from EU.”

The blame is not only on the backward steps of the political will and the political timing that almost four years have passed without a step. The mosque is one but the authorities that are involved in the construction are endless: foreign ministry, education ministry, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Finance and the City of Athens are all basic players.  And the Greek bureaucracy is there at every step.

Meanwhile the square footage of the mosque, that he and the thousands of religious Muslims that live in our country are waiting from 2006 to be constructed, are decreasing. “In the beginning the measurements in the blueprint from the general secretary of the minister of education Mrs. Marietta Giannakou, was 56.000m². At the next meeting, it became 42, the governments change and I make a third meeting to drop at 24 and we reached today 16.000m².”

The objections came from the Church. “Since the first moment that the construction of the mosque came up, the Holy Synod had not an opposite opinion. And that because every human has the right of religious freedom where worship is included, which is a respectful right and is entrenched by the constitution,” states the representative of the Holy Synod, Bishop of Nafpaktos Ierotheos. “In fact, at the same time, in an action of good will the Church bestowed for use 30.000m² from its land in Shisto to create a Muslim cemetery.” The truth is that in the plans of the new Christian cemetery in Shisto, in order to cover the needs of the municipalities of Piraeus and Moshato, was from the beginning a plan for a Muslim cemetery in this area.

Then everything changed. “The Church objected at the establishment of an Islamic educational center,” clarified Mr. Ierotheos. “The concern of the Archbishop Christodoulos was intense for such a center because centers like that promote not only the religious teachings but also political propaganda.”

The area for the cemetery at Shisto finally was found unsuitable because of the terrain, the Islamic center was found “dangerous” and somehow the discussion (and the concern) came back to the mosque. “The law of 2006 at the first New Democracy party government was zoning the mosque at a part of Eleonas. At the second government of Karamanlis, under the authority of his office was formed a committee where we as City of Athens were participating, because this area belongs to the Ministry of National Defense and is characterized as a ‘navy fort’ but it must become a green park and come to the authority of the City of Athens,” states Mrs. Tasia Lagoudaki, topographer of the City of Athens.

Things already became complex without calculating the reef of National Defense ministry, that owns the “navy fort” based on a royal order. “In fact it is a garage with five buses,” Mr. Elghandour supports and continues. “The defense ministry is compromised with 5 million euro and 10 month time to relocate the navy. While the minister was Mr. Meimarakis (and after a formal question of PM Pericles Korovesis in the parliament) he asked initially 68 million (!). We proposed to go out with coupons – not from abroad, we do not want foreign money to build the Athens mosque, we want the Greek state to control it, to gather money from the immigrants and from the Greek Muslims.”  This proposition was not accepted and the last elections came.

When will we come out of the underground garages?

“After the first 100 days of the new government and particularly the 110^th day I sent a letter to the Defense ministry because the problem is with them. As a Greek who has served the Hellenic army I have the courage to complain,” notes Mr. Naim Elghandour who lives 38 years in our country. As a result they invited me and went with all data in hands. For the time being the only movements you can observe are statements before the visit of the prime minister to a country that is in danger to be asked for the mosque, and endless calls from foreign and domestic press to my phone for the development of the mosque. I do not want to harm the image of Greece abroad. At “Focus” I did not respond to them after the front cover with Aphrodite with the finger. Does anyone appreciate that? Will our children ever come out of the underground garages, and now that we have Ramadan with 40°C we are risking to be carried by the ambulances?” he wonders.

The adventure started at 1996

The adventures of the mosque in Greece, as states at “Vima” the vice president of the government Mr. Theodore Pangalos, have their roots way back. “This story started at 1996 by my initiative and based in two thoughts. Firstly that we are the only European country that has not a mosque and secondly that in Athens that time were gathered about 50.000-60.000 without an official and established place to perform their religious duties, when in all Muslim countries there are Orthodox Churches even in Teheran.”

That time as a foreign minister he prepared a draft law describing the establishment of a Muslim religious and cultural institution in the Hellenic capital. “The Greek state would have the control, the majority of the funds would be ours but we would accept contributions from countries that were willing to do so. At that time Arab countries as Saudi Arabia and Egypt showed interest. The Institution would include a library, a place of worship and a place of gathering as in weddings, for example, men and women celebrate separately.”  The plan proceeded for Peania.

“The Archbishop of that time had stated his approval, the mayor of Peania the same, the Arabs as well.”  But on 1999 Mr. Pangalos left the foreign ministry with Otsalan case and somewhere there “the plan was abandoned and the reactions started.”

Source: Enet

This is a photo from material that was saved and sent to “Eleftherotypia”. It shows Israeli soldiers with the guns in their hands on Greek flag cargo ship “Eleftheri Mesogeios” (Free Mediterranean) while they are arresting an activist, professor Vangelis Pissias.

The initative “A Ship to Gaza” stated at “E” that the whole material and the photograph will be used as evidence at international courts.

The initiative addresses a question to the Greek government: “What is Netaniahou doing in Greece? He is accountable both to UN and to his country.”

“Συγκλονιστική η μαρτυρία του δημοσιογράφου του ΣΚΑΪ Άρη Χατζηστεφάνου που μετείχε στην αποστολή, για την αγριότητα των ισραηλινών δυνάμεων κατά τη διάρκεια της κράτησης και ανάκρισης των ακτιβιστών.”

 “The shocking testimony of SKAI journalist  Ari Hadjistefanou participant in the mission [Ship to Gaza], the brutality of the Israeli forces during detention and questioning of activists.”